• The biggest hedge funds are battling it out to attract and retain top talent and outperform peers.
• Business Insider has talked to elite hedge funds to get a peek into their recruiting processes.
• From internships to how they hire for tech, here's what we know about getting a job at a hedge fund.

The war for the best hedge fund talent cuts across all levels and positions. Firms like Citadel, Point72, D.E. Shaw, and Bridgewater are in constant competition for the best and brightest to help them gain an edge in the cutthroat industry. 

These behemoth funds are now putting serious time and resources into recruiting for internship and training programs to create a steady employee pipeline.

Eye-popping pay, prestige, challenging work environments, and the promise of working with some of the best investors in the industry means there's a lot of competition for a spot at one of these firms. 

The money is top-shelf, even for financial services jobs.

These funds, which have grown into behemoths, are now contributing serious time and resources to recruit for internship and training programs that could better guarantee them a steady employee pipeline.

Eye-popping pay, prestige, challenging work environments, and the promise of working with some of the best investors in the industry means they have a pretty attractive proposition to offer.

Internships at quant fund D.E. Shaw can pay up to $22,000. Entry-level analysts and software engineers get paid above 6 figures a year. Portfolio managers with winning strategies can take home millions. 

Business Insider has talked to some of the biggest hedge fund managers about how they attract talent, as well as ways to join their ranks and be successful at their firms. Here's everything we know. 

Internships and fellowships

The opaque and secretive world of hedge funds might not necessarily be an obvious choice for many college graduates. Massive money managers are launching new programs to change that and attract young, diverse wunderkinder at earlier stages than before. 

• Inside Balyasny's ATLAS Program for High School Students
• Why Balyasny, Bridgewater, and Point72 are engaging students from underrepresented backgrounds about hedge funds
• Bridgewater's chief diversity officer explains how the hedge fund is using its new fellowship program to create a pipeline of diverse talent in finance 

• Here's how to land a spot at Citadel's elite summer internship 
• A D.E. Shaw internship could land a dream gig at the secretive hedge fund. Here's what it takes. 
• What it takes to stand out as an intern at Steve Cohen's Point72 and land a job offer, according to 2 portfolio managers and its program director 
• Citadel's Ken Griffin's advice to interns: Hustle during your 20s and be aggressive when asking for a promotion

Analyst and investment training programs

Typically, hedge funds acquire their investment talent after a few years of working at an investment bank. Increasingly though, the industry's top players are paying graduates to train through intensive programs that can lead to joining investment teams straight after college. 

• How to get accepted into Point72's ultra-elite analyst training program, whose acceptance rate is less than 1%  
• This Citadel training program is harder to get into than Harvard and can lead to a six-figure salary with the elite hedge fund after graduation 

Even the way up-and-coming portfolio managers cut their teeth has evolved.

• How Dmitry Balyasny's $21 billion hedge fund is looking to get ahead in the war for investment talent
• Inside Point72's boot camp for developing all-star portfolio managers, where Steve Cohen is known to grill up-and-comers who think they're ready for the big time

Tech jobs and training programs

Hedge funds have long been competing with the finance industry and top tech companies for top technologists. Engineers and algorithm developers are key to helping researchers, data scientists, and traders develop cutting-edge investment strategies and platforms. Quant shop D.E. Shaw also has a unique approach to finding talent.

• Why quant giant D.E. Shaw seeks out academics, doctors, and veterans to work at the $60 billion hedge fund
• Inside Citadel's exclusive engineering program that's helped the $47 billion hedge fund snap up talent from Google and Goldman Sachs
•  Here's how to get a job at Billionaire Izzy Englander's Millennium, from the programing language to know to the interview questions to prep for
• Millennium is on the hunt for engineers in Miami. A top tech exec for the $58 billion hedge fund details the firm's new training program.
• Inside Man Group's popular training program for non-tech employees that teaches them skills to automate tasks and reduce errors in their work

Other resources, including recruiter insight and how to dominate a 5-hour interview

• Inside the hedge-fund talent war: How elite funds are battling for star portfolio managers
• The talent brokers of quant trading: The headhunters at the forefront of Wall Street's systematic-trading and data-science hiring frenzy
• Try our searchable database of more than 350 Wall Street headhunters to find your dream job in private equity, investment banking, or hedge funds 
• Meet the Gatekeepers: The top private equity, hedge fund recruiting firms to get a buy-side job
• Inside the 5-hour psychological interview that can make or break your career at Citadel, Blackstone, and other finance titans 

• Citadel's Ken Griffin is skeptical of Elon Musk's ability to cut trillions from the federal budget.
• Tesla CEO Musk has been tapped to run the proposed Department of Government Efficiency by Trump.
• Entitlement reform would be needed for the level of cuts Musk has called for, Griffin said Wednesday.

Billionaire Citadel founder Ken Griffin wants to get America's "fiscal house in order" but doesn't believe Elon Musk can do it alone.

Speaking at Wednesday's DealBook conference in New York, Griffin said it's unlikely that Musk, who has become a close advisor of President-elect Donald Trump and is set to co-run the proposed Department of Government Efficiency or DOGE, will be able to cut the trillions he has called for without entitlement reform.

"Making cuts in any form or fashion will be very politically unpopular," said Griffin, who was one of the biggest donors to the Republican Party this election but declined to support Trump directly — though he said he voted for the real estate mogul.

Griffin — who paused for a couple of seconds when asked for his opinion about Musk's new task running Doge, prompting scattered laughs from a crowd that included fellow hedge-fund billionaire Dan Loeb and Polymarket founder Shayne Coplan — said the bond market could eventually become unsteady if there isn't a clean-up of the country's spending.

"To make Elon wear the entire burden of that responsibility is preposterous," he said.

Griffin, who lauded Musk's entrepreneurial abilities, also said he hopes the Federal Reserve will remain independent so it can make decisions too unpopular — but necessary — for politicians.

The wide-ranging interview between Griffin and New York Times editor and CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin revealed that the billionaire hedge-fund manager does not think Trump's most explosive economic policies, such as his aggressive tariff proposals, will go into effect.

Last week, Trump posted about implementing tariffs on countries like Brazil and Russia that were considering creating a new currency to reduce the power of the US dollar. "It's not going to happen," he said, bluntly about Trump's recent warning.

Griffin said this is how negotiating is done in real estate, and he believes items like tariffs are a "second-order" issue.

"America is open for business," Griffin said repeatedly, and he pushed that throughout the interview. Gone, he said, is the "paralyzing regulation" of Joe Biden's administration, and executives are "smiling from ear-to-ear."

"For corporate America, it's a better world today than it was before the election," he said.

Griffin's $65 billion firm had a strong November, returning 1.8% in its flagship Wellington fund. Asked if there was still room in the investment industry for smaller funds and individual investors, Griffin said there's always going to be a dominant incumbent in any industry.

"When I started out, I had to go compete with Salomon Brothers and Goldman Sachs," he said.

Now, new launches compete with his firm and peers like Millennium and Point72.

"Your entrepreneurs find a way to make it happen," he said.

• The industry's biggest names were up despite choppy markets following Donald Trump's victory.
• Balyasny led the way among multistrategy firms, posting a 3.9% monthly gain.
• Firms like Citadel and Schonfeld continue to build on a strong year of returns.

The biggest names in hedge funds ended an up-and-down month in markets in the black.

Multistrategy managers overcame the volatility surrounding Donald Trump's electoral victory — when markets initially skyrocketed but then sold off briefly before rebounding — with firms like Balyasny, Schonfeld, and Citadel posting strong returns for the month.

Balyasny led the way among its peers with a 3.9% gain in November to bring the Chicago-based manager's 2024 returns to 11.6%, a person close to the manager confirmed.

Schonfeld meanwhile continued its strong streak for the year, returning 1.8% in its flagship fund. The New York-based manager is up 17.2% for the year, a person close to the firm said. Ken Griffin's Citadel was also up 1.8% last month in its Wellington fund, while Izzy Englander's Millennium made 2.2%.

The billionaires' firms are up 13.2% and 12.5%, respectively, on the year. Bloomberg previously reported on the firms' November returns.

While multistrategy managers' returns were dwarfed by those of macro managers like Rokos and Discovery Capital that took big swings on Trump's victory, their biggest selling point — steadiness in turbulent markets — was proven true in November.

See below for more performance data. Additional firms will be added as their numbers are learned. The managers declined to comment or did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

• Citadel founder Ken Griffin said on Thursday that he's "open" to selling a stake in his hedge fund.
• Griffin had previously sold a minority stake in his market maker to VC funds Sequoia and Paradigm.
• He said he'd look for "a partner that feels like Sequoia."

BlackRock's potential investment into Izzy Englander's Millennium might have Citadel founder Ken Griffin thinking.

At the Economic Club of New York Thursday, Griffin complimented BlackRock founder Larry Fink for being a "legend in asset management" and said that if the tie-up eventually does go through, "it's a very interesting" one. The early-stage talks between BlackRock and multistrategy rival Millennium were reported by the Financial Times earlier this month.

Asked if he would consider such a move, the billionaire said he'd "be open to selling a minority stake," which Citadel, the $65 billion hedge fund that's become the most profitable firm in the industry's history, has never done.

"We take great pride in being a private partnership," he said, and believes the structure has helped the firm run smoothly for the more than 30 years it's been in existence.

Nearly every hedge fund is still owned by its founders and a select group of partners, even the older industry giants like Citadel, though Griffin may be looking to sell a stake at the peak. He said in a Bloomberg interview on Tuesday that the extreme growth that has added billions of assets to his fund and his peers' is not likely to continue.

In New York Thursday, he pointed out the benefits of selling a stake in his market maker Citadel Securities in 2022 to venture capital firms Sequoia and Paradigm for more than $1 billion. The investment valued the firm at $22 billion.

He said Sequoia in particular brought "real insights" into how to manage a rapidly growing company, noting the firm's past investments into Apple and Nvidia before the two companies were public.

Griffin said Sequoia has pushed Citadel Securities' leadership in the boardroom, making them a better company.

As for who he'd want as a minority stakeholder of Citadel, Griffin clearly has a type.

"We'd look for a partner that feels like Sequoia," he said.